


On the Inside Looking In

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, D/s, Future tiemz, M/M, broadcast porn as a reality tv show, dom!Dean, kinkmeme fill, sub!cas, weird future priest kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:59:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the series finale of LIVE! As you know, recently resigned Bishop of Imbria Castiel Novak has endured the gauntlet of LIVE!'s extensive personality testing! Will this not-so-holy man succeed in his quest to save his old parish from demolition? Can fan favorite Dean Winchester help Castiel earn an audience with the eccentric multimillionaire known only as G, or will romance get in the way? Tune in tonight, and find out!</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Inside Looking In

There are cameras in the corners of every room in the LIVE! facility, and Castiel is vividly aware of them as he loosens his tie. His brother is on the live feed, bloody faced, the digital projection of his suffering in gruesome 3-D. 

"I'm going to start now," says the hard-faced man standing on the other side of six inch plexiglass doors, and presses his hand to the imprint at the center where they lock, saying, "I'm coming in."

Castiel swallows, and says, "Yes," because he does not know how else to respond. The cameras cannot pick up the holographic projection used to keep him from walking out as soon as those doors open; they are only here for the benefit of the viewing populace. On the western wall of the Lobby Chamber where he stands is a full-length LCD displaying ratings, fan requests, and how much Castiel has earned. 

The doors click open. Castiel is not ready, but he says nothing more as the man steps through. 

***

Azazel's yellow eyes are the eye-catching logo of LIVE!, known throughout the six Colonial feeds as the most discerning man of the Modern Era. Thirteen years ago, he started LIVE! as his own personal pet project with the tagline: On the Inside Looking In. The show, one of thousands currently airing on the circuit feeds that broadcast throughout known space, should have been nothing special. 

What LIVE! has to offer that the two-thousand-six shows broadcast on Videodrome do not is full VR feedback for every character. Viewers can either jump in blind to a primary character for a season, or play as protagonist, antagonist, or any of the side characters once the record chips are available for purchase, rewatching their favorites as many times as they like. 

LIVE! is not just another show. LIVE! is living another life for twenty four hours when the season is done, and tasting the emotions of another mind. There are six hundred thousand shows in production at this moment, but only LIVE! is on the tongues of the pundits and critics, and only LIVE! stirs social controversy even in the dull dark corridors of known space. People talk about addiction to LIVE!, about dangerous obssession, like it is a virulent plague that medicine cannot cure. Fans buy every edition of the record chips, watching and rewatching their favorites, falling in love again and again with the many characters, with their strife and struggle. 

Azazel is a mastermind, and LIVE! is a deadly phenomenon he has nurtured into the monster it is today. He owns Io, and half of Mars, and he can get away with cutting corners. He is above whatever law is foolish enough to think it can hold him.

Safety is not a guarantee for LIVE!'s actors. The plot of the season is decided by Azazel's whim and the fancy of whomever he brings in to direct. The first season featured a developing romance between the world's first successful clone, a man named Isaac, and a retired fighter pilot named Tamara. The third was a gruesome death race that ended with the primary character-- an unlucky woman named Bela-- forced to choose between killing her only friend, or killing herself. Fans still talk in awe about what it feels like to be Bela in her final moments; to be Gertrude, watching her. 

This is the big secret: Not all participants in LIVE! are willing.

Editing software ensures that the fans don't know. 

***

"You've watched the show, haven't you?" says Dean Winchester, while his heavy hand presses down on the back of Castiel's neck. The skin of Dean's fingers is rough with calluses, and his face is unreadable, a perpetual overconfident smirk twisting his lips. Castiel fights to keep his breathing even. He has given up the battlefront where blushing is concerned. "You recognized me. I could tell."

They have only actually met once before. 

Castiel's eyes nervously flick between Dean Winchester's face, the projection of Inias, who is being tortured, and the ratings screen. Three billion people are currently waiting in queue for the final recording of LIVE! season thirteen to be released to the broadcast. He has been told repeatedly that if he fails here, his brother will die. To say he is nervous would be like unto comparing a match to a solar flare. 

"Hey."

His attention settles on Dean Winchester's eyes, magnetic things that are confident and just a little cold. He has loved them for nine seasons. They are as much a shock tonight as they were during that single, previous meeting. Castiel answers, late, "I've watched the show." Just that, just that simple, subtle agreement. 

"Ain't that sacrilegious?" Dean scoffs, squeezing more tightly at the back of Castiel's neck before sliding a hand down his spine to the small of his back, pulling him in closer, pushing Castiel against Dean's chest. Dean smells faintly of static and more strongly of watercress, probably cologne. The static confirms what Dean has always said: that LIVE! is his nightjob, that by day he is an engineer. The scent makes Castiel's knees watery and he is glad that Dean holds him in place. 

"There is no creed in the Prophet's text against the use of technology." Castiel tries to keep his voice steadier than his legs want to be. 

"You're a priest."

"Was."

"Still, that's a whole lifetime that it was your sworn duty to refrain from sexual activity, and I know what goes on in my bits of the show." The harsh tone of the words has Castiel cringing, pulling away in shame before he realizes what he's doing. It gives Dean the perfect opportunity to grab Castiel's chin with his free hand, pushing it up, forcing him to look Dean in the eye again. "You didn't watch me having sex, did you, preacher?"

He can't prevent the immediate wash of anxiety and frustration that floods him from polluting his voice when he answers. Castiel feels hot where Dean's fingers are making direct contact with his skin. "No," he admits, fighting with shame. 

The facade fades for a moment, Dean's cold demeanor softening ever so slightly. "What, really?"

"Really."

"Then why the hell did you pick me?" 

***

Azazel gives interviews at the beginning and end of every season, and as the broadcast of the finale is prepared (a two hour affair that is being offered on sale to ensure a higher viewcount) he sits with well-known skeptic, Uriel. 

"Now, would you say it was unorthodox--"

"You're a funny one, mister Uriel!"

"--to have the protagonist this season be a fan of the show?" Uriel is unfazed, his slight smile the only indication that he even heard Azazel's snide interruption. They sit in a fabricated environment. Uriel lives on Mars in the Arabian Sea, and is broadcasting from a blank room. Azazel is broadcasting from his palace on Io, and the scenery is all supplied from his end. The ceilings are so high that they aren't visible, Azazel's desk is an ornately carved offense to simplistic modern aesthetic, inlaid with gold over the polished mahogany of its surface. Recording chips are strewn over it without rhyme or reason, and a two-headed lizard--perhaps his pet, perhaps a trophy-- appears to be playing in them, currently hiding itself beneath two that it managed to nestle on top of its tiny back. Behind Azazel, the walls are hung with trophies, pieces of art, and the head of a slaughtered, stuffed deer, antlers standing out paradoxically like wings to either side of Azazel's chair.

"I'm glad you asked, actually-- because, and I'll tell you why, it's all purely a coincidence that things turned out that way. The entire reason we found Castiel and asked him to join the show this season, our final season, was more to do with his unique status. You know the church has been in a long decline over the last few hundred years, you know, and not just those of Christian denomination; even Islam is largely concentrated on Earth these days. Space seems too wonderful to contemplate the ascetic life, I think, and we can't be bothered to remember these old historical trappings of the pre-space age, you know?"

"I know what you mean." In his blank room, Uriel forces a smile. It withers with contempt he cannot hide. Azazel, in love with the sound of his own voice, doesn't care. 

"Castiel was this beautiful opportunity, Mister Uriel, to explore the mind of a man who just made the decision-- a very public decision, mind you-- to step down from his position as the Bishop of South Imbria. That's a massive change, and the remaining cathedrals in the Lunar area have been petitioning to convert into hospitals and research centers, since there's not much leadership-- hell, not much interest in church these days. So you have to ask-- am I right?-- you have to ask, what motivates a man of faith in this crazy fucked up world of ours, these worlds and colonies of ours, in the year 2813, no less--"

Azazel's eyes glitter with passion as he brings his fist down on his desk. The two-headed lizard resting there skitters away in shock, chips clattering around it. One falls off of the desk to the floor. 

"--what makes him spend a lifetime dedicated to his priesthood, and suddenly give it all up instead?"

***

"There's twenty four rooms here," Dean says, in a calm, collected tone of voice that is at odds with the hand still gripping Castiel's chin, the other one now steady on Castiel's shoulder, keeping him in place. "Including the lobby, so possibly as many as twenty three more to get through, depending on how you do."

"Yes."

"You understand what we have to do to get through them?"

"Yes, I understand."

The face Dean makes is so disgusted Castiel wrests himself from the bigger man's grasp, huffing in irritation. He came to this event because he had no choice, because Inias will die if he says no, and-- maybe very slightly-- because he had chosen Dean feeling that he knew him, that he was safe with him. That if, after all, Castiel had to go through this experience, at least it would be with someone he had chosen. 

"You don't think I do," Castiel supplies helpfully, straightening his suit jacket and reaching up to adjust his tie. 

He is startled when Dean slaps his hands away, catching the trailing end of Castiel's tie and tugging on it very slightly to pull it tighter, like a leash. Dean's expression is somewhere between mischief and that same disgust now, and Castiel hates himself a little bit for latching on to the mischief and forgiving Dean that infantilizing condescension. 

"Please, let go."

"Let me make this clear for you," Dean says, very softly, stepping closer. Castiel holds his ground, even as Dean leans in to breathe the rest into Castiel's ear as a whisper. "This is a maze designed to force you to do things you don't want to do, preacher. Sex ain't the only thing."

They stand together in silence a moment. 

"That okay with you?"

Castiel nods.

"Then you do what I say, and we'll get through this just fine. Yeah?"

Castiel nods again.

***

There are two doors leading out from the lobby room. The left is marked "Inhibition", the right is marked "Conviction". Dean selects the Inhibition door.

It opens on a fine room wreathed in silks, furnished with a soft, soft bed, with a full wardrobe of clothes of every kind, with a table stocked to overflowing with fresh, delectable food. Dean enters the room, leading Castiel by his tie to the bed, and picks up the record chip that is laying there, its blue etched surface glimmering. 

"Objective," Dean requests, in the same, steady voice he has used in his previous nine seasons on the show. Castiel wonders dizzily if there had been many complaints on fandom channels of communication about Dean's near-absence on the show this season. In full truth, his constant concern for Inias's well-being (and his own, to a lesser extent) have clouded the experience for him, and he hasn't been allowed to communicate with the outside world for the duration, anyway. Up until Dean's appearance in the seventeenth episode, Castiel had not been able to take the romantic subplot elements of the show seriously, and been unrepentantly honest about it. From then on, a new distraction had warred with the rest, and fans had evidently picked up on it since the final choice had been between Dean or the man named Balthazar. 

Castiel is still not certain if he should be frustrated or glad that his fellow viewers pushed to give him the option of Dean, in the end. He's not sure if he could have survived Crowley or Alistair, and he had feared being promised to Raphael. Luckily, he was evidently not the only one who had not enjoyed the long period of recovery needed after his and Raphael's first meeting. At least Dean is a veteran of the show, and not just his industry of choice. Balthazar would have been as clueless and unhelpful here and now as Castiel feels, himself, most likely. 

"Objective," answers the chip, in a woman's pre-recorded voice, "Overcome inhibition. Conditions: Use of alcohol or recreational drugs prohibited. Use of sex toys prohibited. Time: One Hour. Consequences: Branding." 

Thinking of Inias being branded as punishment for his failure should be more than enough to motivate Castiel, but he is lost. He stares down at the chip in Dean's hand in silence, anxiety rising, until Dean tugs lightly on the tie. He looks up, an involuntary choking noise accompanying the pressure on his throat before it eases. Not for the first time, he is grateful to have been so sloppy with the knot, since it does not hold well even when Dean pulls it taut. 

Dean's expression is searching, now. "You okay to do this?"

No one has asked Castiel this question all season. No one has bothered. No one has questioned the manufactured plot of threat to his old parish, the fact that he was unable to turn to any legitimate sources for help, the fact that the man known as 'G' has offered to help for the price of Castiel's deep self-examination and sexual education. No one has wondered why an ex-priest should have to suddenly embrace values he's never upheld as a consequence of wanting to do something kind for the people he used to take care of. Therefore, when he answers, it can only come out one way. 

Helplessly: "Do what?"

There's a slight softening around Dean's eyes, and his smile is uncharacteristically warm. Perhaps he is remembering what it was like to be a virgin, if he was ever a virgin. "All right, listen to me. Can you do exactly what I tell you to do?"

"Yes." Castiel is fairly confident that he can. Nervousness prompts him to be completely honest. "Probably."

The smile gets feral. 

"We'll see if we can't fix that to just a 'yes', then. Start by taking off your tie." Dean lets the tip drop harmlessly from his fingers, and takes a seat on the soft-looking bed. It takes a moment for his thoughts to catch up, but Castiel does as told, and Dean rewards him with an encouraging smile. "Good stuff. Hey, hold up. Do you wanna do this, Cass?"

"Do what?" Castiel says again earnestly, exasperated enough to completely miss the nickname. His fingers are in the middle of the knot of his tie, tangled as he tries to undo it.

"Have sex with me tonight." There's a moment- just a moment- where Dean's virile confidence fades, and he even looks vulnerable. "Do you want to?"

Dean is, when not on LIVE!, a highly successful porn star. The fact that he is also a successful participant of LIVE! is the subject of much debate amongst pundits about whether actors in pornography develop the same skills needed for actors in reality shows. Many say yes, some say no. Generally it's a source of endless debate. One point on which they can all agree, however, is Dean's earnest appeal. They say it in their way, that he seems to mean what he says when he's on LIVE!, that he seems to enjoy sex and to care about people. 

In this moment Castiel is sure Dean means it. Means the question and that little flicker of uncertainty. He doesn't know the answer, and (flustered) ducks his head while he tries to figure it out, fidgeting, rubbing the back of his neck, uncomfortable. "If you mean to ask if I find you physically attractive," the words tumble out awkwardly, "then the answer is yes, very much so."

The rest, that he doesn't want to be a participant on LIVE!, that he would prefer this all had happened naturally somehow and without threat presented to his brother, all of that can't be said without costing Inias his life and Castiel everything he is here for, so he says nothing about it. 

Somehow, he feels like Dean understands anyway, in the silence that follows. 

Dean lets out a low, slightly shaky sigh and nods, all smiles again. "Okay, then. Unbutton your coat, and slide it off of your arms. Do exactly as I tell you."

Castiel does.

**Author's Note:**

> More to come; it's very late on a work night, so I apologize if there are any discrepancies. I will be reviewing this at a later date to check/correct.
> 
> Info:
> 
> [Prompt:](http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/70609.html?thread=24107729#t24107729)  
> Castiel is a 37 year old gay ex-priest who has recently gained worldwide attention after coming out a "virgin" in his small town and accepting a million dollar proposition of a big time porn company to lose his virginity on camera in a special 2 hour live event that is predicted to be seen by more than 20 million people around the world.
> 
> Dean Winchester is the porn industry's golden boy. He's filmed over 200 gay films since he entered at the age of 21. About to reach 10 years in the industry, Dean is ready to retire and has been waiting for a way to go out with a bang. And this may be the perfect opportunity.


End file.
